The Choice We Face Read online

  Reengaging with public schools, enrolling children in public schools, and working to improve traditional public schools will ultimately reframe the debate. A bottom-up approach to reform will transform the way we as a nation view education. Rather than an individualized, private endeavor, education will truly become an institution for a public, shared, and common good. The fight will not be for my children but for our children.

  The choice we face is ours to make.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS BOOK BEGAN in Charleston, South Carolina, while working with Dave Dennis, Millicent Brown, Minerva King, Kendall Deas, Thomas Dixon, Smurf, Patricia Wright, Dan Ryan, Daron Calhoun, Jesse Williams, Jeremy Rutledge, Meta Van Sickle, and other stalwart defenders of and advocates for public education. Their insights, experience, and commitment to the fight are real and humbling. Their ability to push and push back leaves me in awe.

  John Brown and Tom Thumb provided the motivation, strategic direction, and Heaven’s Door to muster the courage, manage the stress, and pursue a vision.

  Alia Habib helped breathe life into my research and writing at the beginning. Brilliant critiques and encouragement from Rachael Marks and the incredible team at Beacon Press were instrumental in finishing the book.

  Derek Black offered invaluable feedback and a sharp eye while writing his own books. I am indebted to his generosity, counsel, friendship, and standard of excellence.

  It was a privilege to revise parts of this manuscript with Candace Livingston, a rising scholar-activist who keeps the struggle going and the fire lit.

  Speaking with teachers, parents, and organizers on the front lines has been a true honor and a learning experience for which I am forever grateful. Ronsha Dickerson, Hymethia Thompson, Keith Benson, Dave Stovall, Cardell Orrin, Stephanie Love, LaTricea Adams, Roblin Webb, Aiko Kojima, Elisabeth Greer, Natasha Irskine, Marla Kilfoyle, Howard Fuller, Troy LaRaviere, and Charlisa Pugh—thank you!

  Many friends and scholars took the time to read my manuscript and impart insights that still illuminate my path. Thank you, Kara Brown, Derrick Alridge, Chris Span, James Anderson, Mira Debs, Carol Singletary, Stan Thangaraj, Allison Anders, Payal Shah, Gloria Boutte, Bobby Donaldson, Christine Finnan, David Martinez, Eddie Cole, Tondra Loder-Jackson, Jennifer Birkshire, and Nick Covington.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION: THE CHOICE WE FACE

  1. Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Knopf, 1974); Bernard E. Powers Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822–1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994); “Burke High School,” Public School Review, https://www.publicschoolreview.com/burke-high-school-profile/29403.

  2. Paul Bowers, “Odds of Getting into Buist Academy? A Little Worse Than Getting into Harvard,” Post and Courier, May 19, 2018; “Porter-Gaud School Rankings,” Niche, https://www.niche.com/k12/porter-gaud-school-charleston-sc/rankings.

  3. Robert N. Gross, Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Sigal R. Ben-Porath and Michael C. Johanek, Making up Our Mind: What School Choice Is Really About (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); Antony Flew, “History of the Voucher Idea,” Foundation for Economic Education, June 1, 1995, https://fee.org/articles/history-of-the-voucher-idea; Frank Heller, “Lessons from Maine: Education Vouchers for Students since 1873,” Cato Briefing Papers, no. 66 (September 10, 2001), https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/bp66.pdf; Phillip W. Magness, “Myth: School Choice Has Racist Origins,” in School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom, ed. Corey A. DeAngelis and Neal P. McCluskey (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2020), 21–38; on Black private education in Chicago, see Worth Kamili Hayes, Schools of Our Own: Chicago’s Golden Age of Black Private Education (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020).

  4. Matt Barnum and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee, “Looking for a Home? You’ve Seen GreatSchools Ratings. Here’s How They Nudge Families Toward Schools with Fewer Black and Hispanic Students,” Chalkbeat, December 5, 2019, https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/12/5/21121858/looking-for-a-home-you-ve-seen-greatschools-ratings-here-s-how-they-nudge-families-toward-schools-wi; Jack Schneider, “What Makes a Great School?,” Harvard Graduate School of Education, October 23, 2017, https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/17/10/what-makes-great-school.

  5. Richard D. Kahlenberg, “From All Walks of Life: New Hope for School Integration,” American Educator 36, no. 4 (Winter 2012–13): 2–14; Charles Willie, Ralph Edwards, and Michael Alves, Student Diversity, Choice and School Improvement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 12–14, 21–31; Charles Willie and Michael Alves, Controlled Choice: A New Approach to School Desegregated Education and School Improvement (Providence: New England Desegregation Assistance Center for Equity in Education, 1996).

  6. Estimated Charter Public School Enrollment, 2016–17, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, http://www.publiccharters.org/sites/default/files/migrated/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/EER_Report_V5.pdf; “Types of School Choice,” EdChoice, https://www.edchoice.org/school-choice/types-of-school-choice; “Public Charter School Enrollment,” National Center for Education Statistics, March 2018, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp; Thomas Snyder, Cristobal de Brey, and Sally A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics, 2017 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019), 67, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2018/2018070.pdf; Ben-Porath and Johanek, Making Up Our Mind, 3–10.

  7. Vinny Badolato, “Getting Past CREDO,” ChalkBeat, November 21, 2011, https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2011/11/21/getting-past-credo; “Charter Schools: Finding Out the Facts,” Center for Public Education, n.d., https://www.nsba.org/Services/Center-for-Public-Education; William Bushaw and Valerie Calderon, “Try It Again, Uncle Sam: The 46th Annual PDK/Gallop Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,” Kappan Magazine 96, no. 1 (September 2014): 9–20.

  8. A Nation at Risk (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, April 1983), https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html; Valerie Straus, “‘A Nation at Risk’ Demanded Education Reform 35 Years Ago. Here’s How It’s Been Bungled Ever Since,” Washington Post, April 26, 2018.

  9. Joe Heim, “On the World Stage, U.S. Students Fall Behind,” Washington Post, December 6, 2016; Drew DeSilver, “U.S. Students’ Academic Achievement Still Lags That of Their Peers in Many Other Countries,” Pew Research Center, February 15, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science; Sophia Faridi, “Happy Teaching, Happy Learning: 13 Secrets to Finland’s Success,” Education Week, June 24, 2014, https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/06/24/ctq_faridi_finland.html. The Finnish phenomenon is challenged as well; see Joe Heim, “Finland’s Schools Were Once the Envy of the World. Now, They’re Slipping,” Washington Post, December 8, 2016.

  10. David Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 13.

  11. Brian D. Ray, “Homeschooling Growing: Multiple Data Points Show Increase 2012 to 2016 and Later,” National Home Education Research Institute, https://www.nheri.org/homeschool-population-size-growing; “Private School Enrollment,” National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp; Estimated Charter Public School Enrollment, 2016–2017.

  12. This conservative number is based on the finding that charter school students receive, in 2011 terms, $6,500 per student. This number does not account for the $3 billion spent on charter schools since 1995 and the $1.1 billion increase Donald Trump proposed to Congress. Caroline Cournoyer, “Trump Proposes Unprecedented Expansion of School Choice,” Governing, February 12, 2018, http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-trump-doe-education-budget-schools-states.html; Jonas Pearson, “Feds Spent $3.3 Billion on Charter Schools, with Few Controls,” PR Watch, May 12, 2015, https://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/05/12830/federal-billions-fuel-charter-
school-industry.

  13. National Center for Education Statistics, “Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups,” July 2017, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rbb.asp.

  14. Buddy Moorehouse, “National Poll: Support for Charter Schools Shows Sharp Increase among All Demographics,” MI Charters (MAPSA, Michigan’s Charter School Association), August 26, 2018, https://www.charterschools.org/blog/national-poll-support-for-charter-schools-shows-sharp-increase-among-all-demographics.

  15. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Tracy Jan, “DeVos Called HBCUs ‘Pioneers’ of ‘School Choice.’ It Didn’t Go over Well,” Washington Post, February 28, 2017; Yamiche Alcindor, “Trump’s Call for School Vouchers Is a Return to a Campaign Pledge,” New York Times, March 1, 2017; Morgan Phillips, “Trump Calls School Choice the Civil Rights Issue of ‘All-Time in This Country,’“ Fox News, June 16, 2020.

  16. Kristen Clark, “Thousands Rally in Support of Program Opposed by Union,” Miami Herald, January 19, 2016; Allen Tullos, ed., “Southern Segregationist Origins of School ‘Choice,’“ Southern Spaces 3 (in possession of the author).

  17. Southern Poverty Law Center, “SPLC Lawsuit: Mississippi Charter School Funding Violates State Constitution,” July 2016, https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/07/11/splc-lawsuit-mississippi-charter-school-funding-violates-state-constitution; Kristen Anderson, “Stories from the Field: Alabama’s School ‘Choice’ Law Offer No Real Choice for Many Disadvantaged Children,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 30, 2014, https://www.splcenter.org/; Valerie Strauss, “NAACP Sticks by Its Call for Charter School Moratorium,” Washington Post, July 26, 2017.

  18. Noliwe Rooks, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education (New York: New Press, 2017); Michael Fabricant and Michelle Fine, Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 2012); Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018).

  19. Paula S. Rothenberg, White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism (New York: Worth Publishers, 2004); Jasmin Collins et al., “Longitudinal Leadership Capacity Growth Among Participants of a Leadership Immersion Program: How Much Does Structural Diversity Matter?,” Journal of Leadership Education 17, no. 3 (July 2018): 175–94; Danielle L. Tate, “White People Need Diversity, Too,” Diverse Issues in Higher Education, June 19, 2018, https://diverseeducation.com/article/118431.

  20. Emily Deruy, “A Tale of Two Betsy DeVoses,” Atlantic, March 8, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/03/a-tale-of-two-betsy-devoses/518952; Áine Cain, “Billionaire Betsy Devos Is the Richest Member of Trump’s Cabinet—and Most of Her Wealth Came from a Company That Has Been Called a ‘Pyramid Scheme,’“ Business Insider, February 15, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-education-secretary-betsy-devos-billionaire-net-worth-2018–2; Abram Van Engren, “Advancing God’s Kingdom: Calvinism, Calvin College, and Betsy DeVos,” Religion and Politics, January 30, 2017, https://religionandpolitics.org/2017/01/30/advancing-gods-kingdom-calvinism-calvin-college-and-betsy-devos; Laura Meckler, “The Education of Betsy DeVos: Why Her School Choice Agenda Has Not Advanced,” Washington Post, September 4, 2018.

  21. Charles Barone and Marianne Lombardo, “Pre-CNN/Facebook Democratic Debate: K–12 Quotes from Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,” Education Reform Now, October 8, 2015, http://edreformnow.org/accountability/pre-cnnfacebook-democratic-debate-k-12-education-quotes-from-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders.

  22. Adam Laats, The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); and Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (New York: New Press, 2020).

  CHAPTER ONE: THE “DIVINE RIGHT” AND OUR FREEDOM OF CHOICE IN EDUCATION

  1. John Lewis and Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 51–52.

  2. Colin Dwyer, “Colson Whitehead, Rep. John Lewis among National Book Award Winners,” National Public Radio, November 16, 2016; Lewis and D’Orso, Walking with the Wind, 23–26, 52 (quote), 54–56; Heather Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

  3. James Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), xiv; “Editorial Excerpts from the Nation’s Press on Segregation Ruling,” New York Times, May 18, 1954; Lewis and D’Orso, Walking with the Wind, 54–55.

  4. “Segregation Crisis Faces Us,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), May 18, 1954.

  5. “Voice of the People,” Clarion-Ledger, June 8, 1954.

  6. “Private School System Setup Is Considered,” Vicksburg (MS) Evening Post, December 9, 1953.

  7. “Editorial Excerpts from the Nation’s Press on Segregation Ruling,” New York Times, May 18, 1954.

  8. “Southern Manifesto,” 102 Cong. Rec. 4515–16 (1956); Matthew Lassiter and Andrew B. Lewis, The Moderates’ Dilemma: Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998); Ronald L. Heinemann, Harry Byrd of Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996).

  9. Pamela Grundy, Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 33–58; Frye Gaillard, The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 3–22.

  10. Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock’s Central High (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), 1; Daisy Bates, The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2007); David Margolick, Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

  11. Lewis and D’Orso, Walking with the Wind, 55–56.

  12. Byrnes quoted in “South Carolina,” Southern School News, November 4, 1954.

  13. Rebekah Dobrasko, “Architectural Survey of Charleston County’s School Equalization Program, 1951–1955,” University of South Carolina, Public History Program, April 2005, 8–12; Charles Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870–1980 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), 33–60; Neil R. McMillen, “Development of Civil Rights, 1956–1970,” in A History of Mississippi, vol. 2, ed. Richard Aubrey McLemore (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1973), 154–57; “Mississippi,” Southern School News, November 4, 1954; “Private School System Setup Is Considered,” Vicksburg Evening Post, December 9, 1953.

  14. On equalization in South Carolina and Mississippi, see Dobrasko, “Architectural Survey of Charleston County’s School Equalization Program”; and Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All.

  15. On the history of school choice and the role of southern segregationists, see Steve Suitts, Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement (Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2020).

  16. “South Carolina,” Southern School News, April 7, 1955, May 4, 1955; John W. White, “Managed Compliance: White Resistance and Desegregation in South Carolina, 1950–1970” (PhD diss., University of Florida, 2006), 54–58.

  17. “Georgia,” Southern School News, September 3, 1954; “Mississippi,” Southern School News, January 6, 1955, March 3, 1955; “Louisiana Legislature Busy with Bills to Maintain Segregation,” Southern School News, July 1956.

  18. “Alabama,” Southern School News, August 1955.

  19. Sondra Gordy, Finding the Lost Year: What Happened When Little Rock Closed Its Public Schools (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009); Benjamin Muse, Virginia’s Massive Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961); An
drew B. Lewis, “Emergency Mothers: Basement Schools and the Preservation of Public Education in Charlottesville,” in Lassiter and Lewis, The Moderates’ Dilemma, 72–103; Christopher Bonastia, Southern Stalemate: Five Years Without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Jill Ogline Titus, Brown’s Battleground: Students, Segregationists, and the Struggle for Justice in Prince Edward County Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); Bob Smith, They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, VA, 1951–1964 (Farmville, VA: Robert Russa Moton Museum, 1996).

  20. Neil R. McMillen, Citizen’s Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction, 1954–64 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 11–16; John White, “The White Citizens Council of Orangeburg County,” in Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina During the Twentieth Century, ed. W. B. Moore Jr. and Vernon Burton (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 261–73; Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 74–75, 174–77; John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 45–48; White, “Managed Compliance,” 181–88.

  21. Dittmer, Local People, 50–52; Millicent Brown, “Civil Rights Activism in Charleston, 1940–1970” (PhD diss., University of Florida); Bolton, The Hardest Deal of All, 66–67, 73–75.

  22. R. Scott Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926–1972 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 159–61; “Ordeal of Numbers,” News and Courier, August 31, 1963; “Submissive South,” News and Courier (Charleston, SC), February 16, 1944; “To Revolutionize Schools,” News and Courier, June 12, 1944.